Police ‘need help against threat of cyber-crime’

Police must collaborate with leading academics if the UK is to fight the growing threat of cyber-crime effectively, according to one of the country’s top officers.

Sir Peter Fahy, Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police, told a conference in Leeds that police had to change the way they worked and couldn’t “investigate our way out of the problem”.

He was speaking at the inaugural N8 Innovation Forum which brought together academics, police and other agencies.

Sir Peter said: “Clearly the way that we’ve done things in the past, the way the court system works, the way that we present evidence and even the rate at which legislation in Parliament keeps up with digital developments must change.

“Given that we can’t investigate our way out of the problem, there is just no way we will have the resources to investigate the amount of internet enabled crime reported to us, particularly fraud, so we need innovative new ways of doing that, seeing what initiatives have an impact on public behaviour.”

Meanwhile, the chief executive of TalkTalk yesterday warned of a “cyber security arms race” threatening all UK companies as she revealed she called in defence experts over the hack of its website.

Dido Harding said she contacted BAE Systems, which supplies cyber security to government agencies, following the attack which saw swathes of customers’ data stolen.